Catherine Palace

Following the Great Northern War, Russia recovered the farm called Saari Mojs (a high place) or Sarskaya Myza, which resided on a hill 65 m in elevation. In 1710, Peter the Great gave the estate to his wife Catherine I, the village of which was initially called Sarskoye Selo, and then finally Tsarskoye Selo (Tsar's Village). In 1723, Catherine I's Stone Palace, designed by Johann Friedrich Braunstein and built by Johann Ferster, replaced the original wooden house. This was a two-storey sixteen-room building, with state chambers finished in polished alabaster, while the upper one included Gobelin tapestry. The southeast portion of the estate included a garden designed by Jan Roosen, with terraces, stone staircases, parterres, trellised arbours, and ponds, while a menagerie was located on the opposite of the estate. During the reign of Peter the Great's daughter, Empress Elizabeth, Mikhail Zemtsov designed a new palace and work began in 1744. In 1745, Zemtsov's pupil, Andrei Kvasov, working with Savva Chevakinsky, expanded the palace to be 300 m long. This included a Middle House, two side wings, a chapel, and the Conservatory Hall, all connected by four galleries with hanging gardens. Then in 1751, Bartolomeo Rastrelli undertook a major reconstruction effort, integrating several buildings, giving the palace its distinctive snow-white columns, sky-blue walls, with gilded stucco, chapel cupolas, and sculptures requiring almost 100 kg of gold. Rastrelli's interiors were based on a Baroque style. Sculptor Johann Franz Dunker, master gilder Leprince, and interior painter Giuseppe Valeriani were some of the distinguished artists. Other notable rooms included the Chinese Room with its porcelain and Coromandel lacquer panels, the Portrait Hall, the Light Gallery, and the Amber Room with Andreas Schlüter's amber panels, while 5 anterooms were connected to the Great Hall, which measured 860 square meters. Construction ended in 1756, when the palace included 40 state apartments, and more than 100 private and service rooms. A New Garden was added, while the Old Garden was improved with a deepening of the Big Pond, connected to springs 6 km away, the addition of a Toboggan Slide, plus the Hermitage, Grotto, Island, and Mon Bijou pavilions. leaving only the hollow shell of the palace behind. Soviet archivists had managed to document a fair amount of the interior before the war, which proved of great importance in reconstructing the palace starting in 1957, by the State Control Commission for the Preservation of Monuments under the direction of Alexander Kedrinsky. == Layout ==

Although Stasov's and Cameron's Neoclassical interiors are manifestations of late 18th-century and early 19th-century taste, the palace is best known for Rastrelli's grand suite of formal rooms known as the Golden Enfilade. It starts at the spacious airy ballroom, the "Grand Hall" or the "Hall of Lights", with a spectacular painted ceiling, and comprises numerous distinctively decorated smaller rooms, including the recreated Amber Room. The Great Hall, or Light Gallery, as it was called in the 18th century, is a formal apartment in the Russian baroque style designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli between 1752 and 1756. The Great Hall was intended for more important receptions such as balls, formal dinners, and masquerades. The hall was painted in two colors and covers an area of approximately 1,000 square meters. Occupying the entire width of the palace, the windows on the eastern side look out onto the park while the windows of the western side look out to the palace plaza. In the evening, 696 lamps are lit on about a dozen chandeliers located near the mirrors. The hall's sculptural and gilded carvings and ornamentation were created according to sketches by Rastrelli and models by Johann Franz Dunker. Beyond the Great Hall is the Courtiers-in-Attendance Dining Room. The room was designed by Rastrelli in the mid-18th century. The small room is lit by four windows which look out into the formal courtyard. The architect placed false windows with mirrors and mirrored glass on the opposite wall, making the hall more spacious and bright. Decorated in the typical Baroque interior style, the hall is filled with gilded wall-carvings, complex gilded pieces on the doors, and ornamental patterns of stylized flowers. The ceiling mural was painted by a well-known student of the Russian School from the mid-18th century. It is based on the Greek myth of the sun god Helios and the goddess of the dawn, Eos. Across from the Courtiers-in-Attendance Dining Room, on the other side of the Main Staircase, is the White Formal Dining Room. The hall was used for the empresses' formal dinners or "evening meals". The walls of the dining hall were decorated with the utmost extravagance with gilded carvings. The furnishings consist of gilded carvings on the consoles. Some of the furniture which can be seen in the room today is original whilst other pieces are reproductions. The painted mural, The Triumph of Apollo, is a copy of a painting completed in the 16th century by Italian artist Guido Reni. The Portrait Hall is a formal apartment covering 100 square meters. The room's walls boast large formal portraits of Empress Catherine I and Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, as well as paintings of Natalya Alexeyevna, sister of Peter the Great, and Empress Catherine II. The inlaid floors of the hall contain precious woods. The Drawing Room of Alexander I was designed between 1752 and 1756 and belonged to the Emperor's private suite. The drawing room stood out from the rest of the formal rooms in the palace due to the fact that the walls were covered in Chinese silk. Other decor in the room was typical for the palace's formal rooms—a ceiling mural and gilded carvings. The elegant card tables and inlaid wood commode display Japanese, Chinese, and Berlin porcelain. The Green Dining Room, which replaced Rastrelli's "Hanging Garden" in 1773, is the first of the rooms in the northern wing of the Catherine Palace, designed by Cameron for the future Emperor Paul and his wife. The room's pistachio-coloured walls are lined with stucco figures by Ivan Martos. During the great fire of 1820 the room was seriously damaged, thus sharing the fate of other Cameron interiors. It was subsequently restored under Stasov's direction. Other interiors by Cameron include the Waiters' Room, with an inlaid floor of rosewood, amaranth and mahogany and stylish Chippendale card tables; the Blue Formal Dining-Room, with white-and-blue silk wallpaper and Carrara marble chimneys; the Chinese Blue Drawing Room, a curious combination of Adam style with Chinoiserie; the Choir Anteroom, with walls lined in apricot-colored silk; and the columned boudoir of Alexander I, executed in the Pompeian style. ==See also==